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Building a Social Media Presence

As I discussed in my previous blog The Benefits of Inbound Marketing with Social Media, I believe social media is one of the most important inbound marketing outlets. Now that we understand this idea, creating a great social media presence is the next step. Hootsuite is a great social media dashboard businesses can use in order to build their presence on many of these networks… and all at one time! As I go through the Hootsuite certification process and use the dashboard with my own social media and content pages I am becoming even more excited to gain tools for PROFESSIONAL social media use (some tend to misunderstand the difference between personal and professional social media use).

There were a lot of great pointers and insights in both of these videos including optimization, analytics, and creating content that resonates. But, the pointers and insights that stuck out to me the most included the fact that businesses must connect with industry influencers and activists in order to reach their industry and grow that social community.

Since we want to create a significant relationship with our customers and ultimately influence brand love, what better way to do that than by building a close relationship with the customers who are willing to be positive spokes people for your brand? Not only are they going to speak positively about your brand, they are sharing this positive opinion with others through their personal social media page. The hope is that you will gain their audience as well.

Here’s an example…. I enjoy make-up (like a lot), I like to think of myself as the make-up guru among my friends. In order to stay up to date with current trends and learn new techniques I follow a lot of make-up artists and industry influencers like @colordujour and @makeupbydenise on Instagram. These artists provide great tutorials and product reviews that impact or influence my purchasing decisions often. I might try a product or begin following a brand I have never heard of because I enjoyed how these artists used them. And I am just 1 follower! These women have well over 100,000 followers on each of their pages and some industry leaders may reach a couple million!

Though there are many more components for businesses to create a great social media presence, I believe connecting with these industry influencers is one of the most important components in building that presence as well as a strong community. All of this is especially important for the start up or small business owner!